Several high-profile seats – including that of Greens leader Adam Bandt – remain on a knife-edge, as PM Anthony Albanese pledges to not get ‘carried away’ after Labor’s landslide win.

“Today, we continue the work of continuing to build Australia’s future,” Albanese told reporters on Monday, in his first press conference since the election.

“I said before the last election that you needed more than one term as a Labor government, and I sought that from the first day … I became Labor leader back in 2019.

“I want Labor to be the natural party of government.”

The Prime Minister confirmed he had spoken to multiple world leaders since Saturday’s win, including US President Donald Trump.

“I had a very warm and positive conversation with President Trump,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra.

“I thanked him for his very warm message of congratulations. We talked about AUKUS and tariffs and we’ll continue to engage.”

Albanese confirmed his first overseas trip would be to Indonesia and that he had accepted an invitation from Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney to attend the G7 summit in June.

With an increased majority in parliament, Albanese said he had a large agenda but was not looking to get ahead of himself.

“We’re not getting carried away. We’ve been an orderly government. We’ve been a reform government,” he said.

“We’ll continue to be an ambitious government … and we’ll continue to engage.”

Albanese and his leadership team will meet on Monday to decide a timeline for naming a new ministry and a caucus meeting, which will showcase a swathe of new faces in the party room.

Depending on the final vote count, the delicate factional balance in the ministry could stir a wider reshuffle, under an ascendant left wing.

Labor, under Albanese, picked up more than a dozen seats, with more on the table as ballot counting continues. The Government needed at least 76 out of 150 lower house seats to win and could end up with 85 or more.

The Government faces a weakened opposition, with the battered Liberals losing at least 13 seats, and potentially as many as 19; it is sitting on 39 so far.

Leader Peter Dutton was the highest-profile casualty, becoming the first opposition leader to lose his seat as three Liberal frontbenchers were booted from parliament by Labor candidates.

Seats on a knife-edge

The nosedive in the Liberal vote has also cost the Greens seats, after support for Labor surged and Liberal preferences flowed to the government rather than the minor party.

The Greens are ahead in the Queensland seat of Ryan but have lost nearby Brisbane and Griffith after their primary vote fell by about 0.4 per cent across the country.

Adam Bandt’s seat of Melbourne remains in doubt, with the Greens leader trailing Labor’s Sarah Witty by almost 2900 estimated votes after initial preference counts.

Greens Adam Bandt at an election night reception in Melbourne. Photo: AAP

Bandt said numbers would move around in coming days but his scrutineers were “confident” of retaining the seat despite postal vote preference flows traditionally favouring Labor.

“What they haven’t done in Melbourne is conduct a full two-preference count of all the ordinary votes and told that that’s something that might not even happen until later in the week,” he told reporters on Monday morning.

Labor is on track to squash the Greens’ charge to flip the seat of Wills in Melbourne’s north, with incumbent Peter Khalil leading challenger Samantha Ratnam by just over 2800 votes.

Bandt, who has served as leader since 2020, argued the Greens bled votes from people swinging to Labor to prevent Peter Dutton becoming prime minister or cast their ballot strategically for independents in winnable contests.

“When there is a big shift from Liberal to Labor, it has flow-through consequences,” he said.

“We expect we’ll have between one and four seats in parliament once the final votes are counted. We feel confident in Melbourne, we are feeling very good in Ryan and Wills but there are a lot more votes to count before we have a final determination about those.”

Teal independents Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel are clinging on in their election races after strong postal returns for the Liberals.

Ryan’s margin over Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer in the high-profile seat in Melbourne’s leafy inner east has shrunk to 1891 votes following postal returns.

The former paediatric neurologist declared victory on Saturday night, with her husband holding up a “Kooyong we did it!” sign before she addressed supporters.

But Ryan said she no longer felt safe in the contest, declaring the outcome was a “50-50” proposition.

“Things were looking good on the night, in [election analyst] Antony Green we trusted,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne on Monday morning.

“But postal votes have been very much pro the conservative side so I think at this point Kooyong is very much in the air. It’s possible [I could lose].”

Daniel’s lead over Liberal candidate Tim Wilson has dwindled to fewer than 100 votes after postal returns.

The former journalist said on Sunday it would take days for the result to be confirmed.

If Wilson or Hamer are able to turn the tables on the teals, they’re likely to be the Liberals’ only federal representatives in metropolitan Melbourne.

Liberal frontbencher Michael Sukkar has lost his ultra-marginal seat of Deakin, with Menzies too close to call as up-and-coming MP Keith Wolahan narrows Labor’s lead.

Aaron Violi is projected to hold onto the neighbouring seat of Casey after trailing Labor’s Naomi Oakley on the night, but fellow Liberal Zoe McKenzie’s battle with independent Ben Smith is too close to call.

La Trobe MP Jason Woods, who survived a primary vote swing of 5 per cent against him, said the Liberals “double trouble” attack on Anthony Albanese and Premier Jacinta Allan failed to land with voters.

“It just didn’t cut through at all,” he said.

Elsewhere, Lisa Chester’s race with Nationals candidate Andrew Lethlean in Bendigo, which overlaps the state premier’s seat, was too close to call.

What next for the Liberals?

After Dutton’s loss in Dickson, the leadership frontrunners include shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley, defence spokesman Andrew Hastie and immigration spokesman Dan Tehan.

On Monday, some of the Liberal party’s senators conceded the Coalition had failed to offer voters a substantial policy platform, especially on the economy.

“You’ve got to have the ambition to lead on the economy and … I don’t think that’s been evident over the last few years,” Liberal senator Andrew Bragg told ABC radio.

The Coalition needed to avoid culture wars that targeted minorities and become more inclusive to win back the middle ground, he said, while branding a decision to preference One Nation as “misguided”.

Senate colleague Hollie Hughes, who lost her party’s pre-selection, was scathing of Taylor’s role in the defeat saying “the economic narrative was just completely non-existent” and there were questions about his capability.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers joined the pile-on, saying it would be “extraordinary if Angus Taylor was rewarded with a promotion after the diabolical contribution that he made to this history-making coalition defeat”.

–AAP